Repeat Offenders
SUPER SIZE ME (or not)
Fret not, my friends, for although I took an unexpected break last month (When I unexpectedly landed a UK deal for my debut novel), REPEAT OFFENDERS is back for more fun and laughter, thrills and spills, madness and mayhem.
Or maybe it’s just going to be filled with more rants: you decide.
This month, I figured on talking about size. Yeah, its an issue all novelists have to deal with. After all, there’s often a great deal of comparison goes on when these writist types get together. It becomes a matter of pride, you know.
Oftentimes, a minimum length is written into a contract before an author signs it. Some people get lucky. My contract is based around a short novel, so I have a nice low minimum count. Others have started out writing an epic debut novel and are only expected to write novels of equal length or greater. I’ve heard some writers have minimums of 140,000 words. Sometimes greater.
That’s a big book.
I remember reading the introduction to Philip K Dick’s masterwork of SF, Dr Bloodmoney where it was claimed to be the longest book Dick ever wrote – a bloody epic by his standards – at a mere slip of 80,000 words. These days, I see a lot of guidelines claiming 80,000 to be a “minimum”.
Ludicrous?
Oh, yes.
It’s enough to make you cry. Now, I get it, the idea that paying £6.99 for a book that’s half the size of the one just beside it looks like a false economy, but as with many other goods, its not about how much you get but what you get. I find a large percentage of the customers who buy only larger books are the same ones who grumble about “a decline in quality” from certain writers, how they're "straying from the story" or "waffling".
Its a strange double standard.
Let me tell you a story about Don Winslow. A genius of a writer. Seriously, one of the great modern noir masters. Had me hooked from California Fire and Life, one of the earliest crime novels I remember out and out loving.
So, a customer comes and says he’s read about this book called, Power of the Dog. It’s a Don Winslow book. The longest, I believe, the man has written. It’s a bloody epic. Hundreds of pages. Tens of years described in staccato, Ellroy-esque prose style. Goddamn, it’s a wonderful book. Big, yes, but absolutely justified in that length. So my customer buys it both from my fawning and from the review that made him come into the store in the first place. And he comes back, weeks later, saying, “Gimme me more of that Winslow.”
I serve up, Fire and Life and Winter of Frankie Machine. The customer looks at them and says, “I won’t buy them.”
Automatic response: “They don’t appeal?”
“No. They’re too short.” He demonstrates with thumb and forefinger, says, “I won’t buy books thinner than this. I just don’t think it justifies the expense.”
Which, to me, is a ludicrous argument. I mean he’s entitled to believe this, but wouldn’t he rather have a short book he loved he loved than a long book that became a slog?
Of course, maybe I’m every bit as bad. I have this thing where I tend to give long books less consideration. Anything over 300 pages better be pretty damn good to get my attention. Better have fireworks going on when I reach the point where my attention starts to slip, or else I just can’t keep going. I’ve not started some books for years because of their length, its true. And I've felt bad about that because, yeah, I have missed on some great reads.
Am I some kind of reverse lengthist?
I hope not.
Some of my favourite books are big. But justified, not written that way purely for market reasons. Like Stephen King's It, which I truly believe is his finest work and one that keeps me coming back time and again. Or the aforementioned Power of the Dog. Anything by James Ellroy. Even the first two books in Kim Stanely Robinson's Mars trilogy (Red Mars and Green Mars) kept me going, but number three (Blue Mars) began to lose the pacing for me.
But, dear God, not Lord of the Rings, the book that probably set me against superflous storytelling in the first place.
In the end I believe, wholeheartedly, that a book is as long as it needs to be. I believe that many books can be cut in half and still be equally – if not more – enthralling. I believe that a novel needs to be necessary in and of itself, meaning its only as long or as short as required without someone arbitrarily imposing those lengths. Writers should be writing the best damn book possible, not fighting to meet inflated word counts.
Its a tough call, of course. I know many people who claim that LoTR is justifable in its eye-numbing length and who would claim that Dick stopped writing just when his stories got interesting. But that's a discussion for another time, exactly how we figure a book is the right size.
You see,
I believe in short books and long books.
Just as long as they’re the best damn books they can be.
Russel D McLean is a bookseller with a national chain who has a special love of crime and mystery fiction. He has written reviews for several markets, had a number of short stories published and his story, Pedro Paul, from Expletive Deleted has been called “awesomely dark” by Publishers Weekly. The opinions and views expressed in this column belong to Russel alone.
His debut, The Good Son, an extremely lean noir novel, will be released in the UK by Five Leaves Press in winter ‘08/’09.
Or maybe it’s just going to be filled with more rants: you decide.
This month, I figured on talking about size. Yeah, its an issue all novelists have to deal with. After all, there’s often a great deal of comparison goes on when these writist types get together. It becomes a matter of pride, you know.
Oftentimes, a minimum length is written into a contract before an author signs it. Some people get lucky. My contract is based around a short novel, so I have a nice low minimum count. Others have started out writing an epic debut novel and are only expected to write novels of equal length or greater. I’ve heard some writers have minimums of 140,000 words. Sometimes greater.
That’s a big book.
I remember reading the introduction to Philip K Dick’s masterwork of SF, Dr Bloodmoney where it was claimed to be the longest book Dick ever wrote – a bloody epic by his standards – at a mere slip of 80,000 words. These days, I see a lot of guidelines claiming 80,000 to be a “minimum”.
Ludicrous?
Oh, yes.
It’s enough to make you cry. Now, I get it, the idea that paying £6.99 for a book that’s half the size of the one just beside it looks like a false economy, but as with many other goods, its not about how much you get but what you get. I find a large percentage of the customers who buy only larger books are the same ones who grumble about “a decline in quality” from certain writers, how they're "straying from the story" or "waffling".
Its a strange double standard.
Let me tell you a story about Don Winslow. A genius of a writer. Seriously, one of the great modern noir masters. Had me hooked from California Fire and Life, one of the earliest crime novels I remember out and out loving.
So, a customer comes and says he’s read about this book called, Power of the Dog. It’s a Don Winslow book. The longest, I believe, the man has written. It’s a bloody epic. Hundreds of pages. Tens of years described in staccato, Ellroy-esque prose style. Goddamn, it’s a wonderful book. Big, yes, but absolutely justified in that length. So my customer buys it both from my fawning and from the review that made him come into the store in the first place. And he comes back, weeks later, saying, “Gimme me more of that Winslow.”
I serve up, Fire and Life and Winter of Frankie Machine. The customer looks at them and says, “I won’t buy them.”
Automatic response: “They don’t appeal?”
“No. They’re too short.” He demonstrates with thumb and forefinger, says, “I won’t buy books thinner than this. I just don’t think it justifies the expense.”
Which, to me, is a ludicrous argument. I mean he’s entitled to believe this, but wouldn’t he rather have a short book he loved he loved than a long book that became a slog?
Of course, maybe I’m every bit as bad. I have this thing where I tend to give long books less consideration. Anything over 300 pages better be pretty damn good to get my attention. Better have fireworks going on when I reach the point where my attention starts to slip, or else I just can’t keep going. I’ve not started some books for years because of their length, its true. And I've felt bad about that because, yeah, I have missed on some great reads.
Am I some kind of reverse lengthist?
I hope not.
Some of my favourite books are big. But justified, not written that way purely for market reasons. Like Stephen King's It, which I truly believe is his finest work and one that keeps me coming back time and again. Or the aforementioned Power of the Dog. Anything by James Ellroy. Even the first two books in Kim Stanely Robinson's Mars trilogy (Red Mars and Green Mars) kept me going, but number three (Blue Mars) began to lose the pacing for me.
But, dear God, not Lord of the Rings, the book that probably set me against superflous storytelling in the first place.
In the end I believe, wholeheartedly, that a book is as long as it needs to be. I believe that many books can be cut in half and still be equally – if not more – enthralling. I believe that a novel needs to be necessary in and of itself, meaning its only as long or as short as required without someone arbitrarily imposing those lengths. Writers should be writing the best damn book possible, not fighting to meet inflated word counts.
Its a tough call, of course. I know many people who claim that LoTR is justifable in its eye-numbing length and who would claim that Dick stopped writing just when his stories got interesting. But that's a discussion for another time, exactly how we figure a book is the right size.
You see,
I believe in short books and long books.
Just as long as they’re the best damn books they can be.
Russel D McLean is a bookseller with a national chain who has a special love of crime and mystery fiction. He has written reviews for several markets, had a number of short stories published and his story, Pedro Paul, from Expletive Deleted has been called “awesomely dark” by Publishers Weekly. The opinions and views expressed in this column belong to Russel alone.
His debut, The Good Son, an extremely lean noir novel, will be released in the UK by Five Leaves Press in winter ‘08/’09.
Lending a Hand...
I’ve been given a wide remit with this new column. I can talk about publishing trends, bookselling, reviewing, all the things that suck up my personal life and overwhelm me as they do many booksellers.
It’s a tougher trade than some people might give it credit for.
But some things really make it worthwhile. Especially when you love books.
And there are few joys in the bookselling world that compare to that of handselling.
I’m talking real handselling here. I’m talking about when you convince a reader to take a chance on an author you know needs to be more widely appreciated. Or when you pass on a single book just because... goddamn, it has to be read.
Some days, when you read the news and the trade papers you start to think: the book trade is screwed. Seriously: the papers say things, no one is reading any more, only a handful of books are ever being bought, the midlist writers are being shoved out by an ever more powerful elite of … for want of a better term… superwriters… whose books sell daft amounts and whose readers only want more of the same.
This stuff – and you read and hear about it daily – can be a killer to those of us who sell books because we love to read. We think: God, the industry’s screwed and maybe even start to consider the job as a kind of battlefield – one where it looks increasingly like we’re on the losing side.
But then you get it; the customer in looking for a book who just knows they want to read… something. Who asks for advice or casually picks up a book in a moment of curiosity. And you talk to them.
And suddenly you understand what bookselling’s really all about.
Spreading the fever about things you love.
(and earning cash while doing it!)
I love to sell books to people. Seriously, I’ll even recommend books that don’t set me alight if I think they’re right for the reader.
I’ll try and gently convince people to move out of their comfort zones and expand their reading pool.
I’ll push the independent publishers who put real work into their books (and the mainstream ones, too, of course - any publisher who impresses me, in fact)
I’ll push authors who just thrill me, I don’t give a damn about the size of their backlist.
I’ll push the books I love, the books I want people to read.
And, believe me, there’s no better thrill than to have someone come back saying, “Dammit, I loved that.”
That’s what it’s all about.
Right there.
The last three words being the best you can hear in this line of work (so let’s hear ‘em again):
“I loved that.”
Even better, when these people become regulars. When they come in and look for you. When they start reccomending books back. When a bookshop becomes...
a community.
It’s the heart of bookselling. Like record stores, we’re not selling a commodity in the same way as fashion outlets or grocery stores. Books (and music) are intensely personal items. You can’t pick up any book and expect to love it. It’s got to connect with you on some emotional level. Have that click. It doesn’t have to be a click you can quantify, either. Just one you can feel.
And a good bookseller has to try and – like a matchmaker, I suppose – get the right books to the right people. They have to understand the click on some level. Know their own reading habits, what makes them love books and be able to identify something like that in other people.
I believe – somewhat fervently – that booksellers are the ones on the front line in the bookselling world, that without their interaction and enthusiasm, the booktrade couldn’t thrive. Internet selling is genius in many ways, but nothing matches the genuine click of having a book reccomended in person.
Handselling and genuine enthusiasm can and should make all the difference in a book’s fortunes.
Without handselling, without that genuinely human enthusiasm – removed from marketing and promotional hype and driven by a genuine love of books – I think we will lose readers. Through handselling, you get to interact and understand other readers. You get to encourage and influence their reading choices. You get to pass along that fire of enthusiasm that you feel when reading certain books.
And along the line - the bottom one for any business - you get people to buy the product.
Which in the end, is what the job is all about.
Getting people to buy books. But dammit, we can do that and feel good about it, too.
Russel D McLean, February 27, 2008
Russel D McLean is a Scottish bookseller who works at the local branch of a national chain. The opinions expressed in this column are entirely his own and as such subject to fallability, stupidity and occasional insanity. His personal blog is at http://www.theseayemeanstreet.blogspot.com/, and you can find his reviews at http://www.crimescenescotlandreviews.blogspot.com/
.
It’s a tougher trade than some people might give it credit for.
But some things really make it worthwhile. Especially when you love books.
And there are few joys in the bookselling world that compare to that of handselling.
I’m talking real handselling here. I’m talking about when you convince a reader to take a chance on an author you know needs to be more widely appreciated. Or when you pass on a single book just because... goddamn, it has to be read.
Some days, when you read the news and the trade papers you start to think: the book trade is screwed. Seriously: the papers say things, no one is reading any more, only a handful of books are ever being bought, the midlist writers are being shoved out by an ever more powerful elite of … for want of a better term… superwriters… whose books sell daft amounts and whose readers only want more of the same.
This stuff – and you read and hear about it daily – can be a killer to those of us who sell books because we love to read. We think: God, the industry’s screwed and maybe even start to consider the job as a kind of battlefield – one where it looks increasingly like we’re on the losing side.
But then you get it; the customer in looking for a book who just knows they want to read… something. Who asks for advice or casually picks up a book in a moment of curiosity. And you talk to them.
And suddenly you understand what bookselling’s really all about.
Spreading the fever about things you love.
(and earning cash while doing it!)
I love to sell books to people. Seriously, I’ll even recommend books that don’t set me alight if I think they’re right for the reader.
I’ll try and gently convince people to move out of their comfort zones and expand their reading pool.
I’ll push the independent publishers who put real work into their books (and the mainstream ones, too, of course - any publisher who impresses me, in fact)
I’ll push authors who just thrill me, I don’t give a damn about the size of their backlist.
I’ll push the books I love, the books I want people to read.
And, believe me, there’s no better thrill than to have someone come back saying, “Dammit, I loved that.”
That’s what it’s all about.
Right there.
The last three words being the best you can hear in this line of work (so let’s hear ‘em again):
“I loved that.”
Even better, when these people become regulars. When they come in and look for you. When they start reccomending books back. When a bookshop becomes...
a community.
It’s the heart of bookselling. Like record stores, we’re not selling a commodity in the same way as fashion outlets or grocery stores. Books (and music) are intensely personal items. You can’t pick up any book and expect to love it. It’s got to connect with you on some emotional level. Have that click. It doesn’t have to be a click you can quantify, either. Just one you can feel.
And a good bookseller has to try and – like a matchmaker, I suppose – get the right books to the right people. They have to understand the click on some level. Know their own reading habits, what makes them love books and be able to identify something like that in other people.
I believe – somewhat fervently – that booksellers are the ones on the front line in the bookselling world, that without their interaction and enthusiasm, the booktrade couldn’t thrive. Internet selling is genius in many ways, but nothing matches the genuine click of having a book reccomended in person.
Handselling and genuine enthusiasm can and should make all the difference in a book’s fortunes.
Without handselling, without that genuinely human enthusiasm – removed from marketing and promotional hype and driven by a genuine love of books – I think we will lose readers. Through handselling, you get to interact and understand other readers. You get to encourage and influence their reading choices. You get to pass along that fire of enthusiasm that you feel when reading certain books.
And along the line - the bottom one for any business - you get people to buy the product.
Which in the end, is what the job is all about.
Getting people to buy books. But dammit, we can do that and feel good about it, too.
Russel D McLean, February 27, 2008
Russel D McLean is a Scottish bookseller who works at the local branch of a national chain. The opinions expressed in this column are entirely his own and as such subject to fallability, stupidity and occasional insanity. His personal blog is at http://www.theseayemeanstreet.blogspot.com/, and you can find his reviews at http://www.crimescenescotlandreviews.blogspot.com/
.
SUPER SIZE ME (or not)
Fret not, my friends, for although I took an unexpected break last month (When I unexpectedly landed a UK deal for my debut novel), REPEAT OFFENDERS is back for more fun and laughter, thrills and spills, madness and mayhem.
Or maybe it’s just going to be filled with more rants: you decide.
This month, I figured on talking about size. Yeah, its an issue all novelists have to deal with. After all, there’s often a great deal of comparison goes on when these writist types get together. It becomes a matter of pride, you know.
Oftentimes, a minimum length is written into a contract before an author signs it. Some people get lucky. My contract is based around a short novel, so I have a nice low minimum count. Others have started out writing an epic debut novel and are only expected to write novels of equal length or greater. I’ve heard some writers have minimums of 140,000 words. Sometimes greater.
That’s a big book.
I remember reading the introduction to Philip K Dick’s masterwork of SF, Dr Bloodmoney where it was claimed to be the longest book Dick ever wrote – a bloody epic by his standards – at a mere slip of 80,000 words. These days, I see a lot of guidelines claiming 80,000 to be a “minimum”.
Ludicrous?
Oh, yes.
It’s enough to make you cry. Now, I get it, the idea that paying £6.99 for a book that’s half the size of the one just beside it looks like a false economy, but as with many other goods, its not about how much you get but what you get. I find a large percentage of the customers who buy only larger books are the same ones who grumble about “a decline in quality” from certain writers, how they're "straying from the story" or "waffling".
Its a strange double standard.
Let me tell you a story about Don Winslow. A genius of a writer. Seriously, one of the great modern noir masters. Had me hooked from California Fire and Life, one of the earliest crime novels I remember out and out loving.
So, a customer comes and says he’s read about this book called, Power of the Dog. It’s a Don Winslow book. The longest, I believe, the man has written. It’s a bloody epic. Hundreds of pages. Tens of years described in staccato, Ellroy-esque prose style. Goddamn, it’s a wonderful book. Big, yes, but absolutely justified in that length. So my customer buys it both from my fawning and from the review that made him come into the store in the first place. And he comes back, weeks later, saying, “Gimme me more of that Winslow.”
I serve up, Fire and Life and Winter of Frankie Machine. The customer looks at them and says, “I won’t buy them.”
Automatic response: “They don’t appeal?”
“No. They’re too short.” He demonstrates with thumb and forefinger, says, “I won’t buy books thinner than this. I just don’t think it justifies the expense.”
Which, to me, is a ludicrous argument. I mean he’s entitled to believe this, but wouldn’t he rather have a short book he loved he loved than a long book that became a slog?
Of course, maybe I’m every bit as bad. I have this thing where I tend to give long books less consideration. Anything over 300 pages better be pretty damn good to get my attention. Better have fireworks going on when I reach the point where my attention starts to slip, or else I just can’t keep going. I’ve not started some books for years because of their length, its true. And I've felt bad about that because, yeah, I have missed on some great reads.
Am I some kind of reverse lengthist?
I hope not.
Some of my favourite books are big. But justified, not written that way purely for market reasons. Like Stephen King's It, which I truly believe is his finest work and one that keeps me coming back time and again. Or the aforementioned Power of the Dog. Anything by James Ellroy. Even the first two books in Kim Stanely Robinson's Mars trilogy (Red Mars and Green Mars) kept me going, but number three (Blue Mars) began to lose the pacing for me.
But, dear God, not Lord of the Rings, the book that probably set me against superflous storytelling in the first place.
In the end I believe, wholeheartedly, that a book is as long as it needs to be. I believe that many books can be cut in half and still be equally – if not more – enthralling. I believe that a novel needs to be necessary in and of itself, meaning its only as long or as short as required without someone arbitrarily imposing those lengths. Writers should be writing the best damn book possible, not fighting to meet inflated word counts.
Its a tough call, of course. I know many people who claim that LoTR is justifable in its eye-numbing length and who would claim that Dick stopped writing just when his stories got interesting. But that's a discussion for another time, exactly how we figure a book is the right size.
You see,
I believe in short books and long books.
Just as long as they’re the best damn books they can be.
Russel D McLean is a bookseller with a national chain who has a special love of crime and mystery fiction. He has written reviews for several markets, had a number of short stories published and his story, Pedro Paul, from Expletive Deleted has been called “awesomely dark” by Publishers Weekly. The opinions and views expressed in this column belong to Russel alone.
His debut, The Good Son, an extremely lean noir novel, will be released in the UK by Five Leaves Press in winter ‘08/’09.
Or maybe it’s just going to be filled with more rants: you decide.
This month, I figured on talking about size. Yeah, its an issue all novelists have to deal with. After all, there’s often a great deal of comparison goes on when these writist types get together. It becomes a matter of pride, you know.
Oftentimes, a minimum length is written into a contract before an author signs it. Some people get lucky. My contract is based around a short novel, so I have a nice low minimum count. Others have started out writing an epic debut novel and are only expected to write novels of equal length or greater. I’ve heard some writers have minimums of 140,000 words. Sometimes greater.
That’s a big book.
I remember reading the introduction to Philip K Dick’s masterwork of SF, Dr Bloodmoney where it was claimed to be the longest book Dick ever wrote – a bloody epic by his standards – at a mere slip of 80,000 words. These days, I see a lot of guidelines claiming 80,000 to be a “minimum”.
Ludicrous?
Oh, yes.
It’s enough to make you cry. Now, I get it, the idea that paying £6.99 for a book that’s half the size of the one just beside it looks like a false economy, but as with many other goods, its not about how much you get but what you get. I find a large percentage of the customers who buy only larger books are the same ones who grumble about “a decline in quality” from certain writers, how they're "straying from the story" or "waffling".
Its a strange double standard.
Let me tell you a story about Don Winslow. A genius of a writer. Seriously, one of the great modern noir masters. Had me hooked from California Fire and Life, one of the earliest crime novels I remember out and out loving.
So, a customer comes and says he’s read about this book called, Power of the Dog. It’s a Don Winslow book. The longest, I believe, the man has written. It’s a bloody epic. Hundreds of pages. Tens of years described in staccato, Ellroy-esque prose style. Goddamn, it’s a wonderful book. Big, yes, but absolutely justified in that length. So my customer buys it both from my fawning and from the review that made him come into the store in the first place. And he comes back, weeks later, saying, “Gimme me more of that Winslow.”
I serve up, Fire and Life and Winter of Frankie Machine. The customer looks at them and says, “I won’t buy them.”
Automatic response: “They don’t appeal?”
“No. They’re too short.” He demonstrates with thumb and forefinger, says, “I won’t buy books thinner than this. I just don’t think it justifies the expense.”
Which, to me, is a ludicrous argument. I mean he’s entitled to believe this, but wouldn’t he rather have a short book he loved he loved than a long book that became a slog?
Of course, maybe I’m every bit as bad. I have this thing where I tend to give long books less consideration. Anything over 300 pages better be pretty damn good to get my attention. Better have fireworks going on when I reach the point where my attention starts to slip, or else I just can’t keep going. I’ve not started some books for years because of their length, its true. And I've felt bad about that because, yeah, I have missed on some great reads.
Am I some kind of reverse lengthist?
I hope not.
Some of my favourite books are big. But justified, not written that way purely for market reasons. Like Stephen King's It, which I truly believe is his finest work and one that keeps me coming back time and again. Or the aforementioned Power of the Dog. Anything by James Ellroy. Even the first two books in Kim Stanely Robinson's Mars trilogy (Red Mars and Green Mars) kept me going, but number three (Blue Mars) began to lose the pacing for me.
But, dear God, not Lord of the Rings, the book that probably set me against superflous storytelling in the first place.
In the end I believe, wholeheartedly, that a book is as long as it needs to be. I believe that many books can be cut in half and still be equally – if not more – enthralling. I believe that a novel needs to be necessary in and of itself, meaning its only as long or as short as required without someone arbitrarily imposing those lengths. Writers should be writing the best damn book possible, not fighting to meet inflated word counts.
Its a tough call, of course. I know many people who claim that LoTR is justifable in its eye-numbing length and who would claim that Dick stopped writing just when his stories got interesting. But that's a discussion for another time, exactly how we figure a book is the right size.
You see,
I believe in short books and long books.
Just as long as they’re the best damn books they can be.
Russel D McLean is a bookseller with a national chain who has a special love of crime and mystery fiction. He has written reviews for several markets, had a number of short stories published and his story, Pedro Paul, from Expletive Deleted has been called “awesomely dark” by Publishers Weekly. The opinions and views expressed in this column belong to Russel alone.
His debut, The Good Son, an extremely lean noir novel, will be released in the UK by Five Leaves Press in winter ‘08/’09.